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Posts Tagged ‘Hippie Movement’

Berkley

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review: Associated Press: Lynne Hollander-Savio- Berkley’s Campus Free Speech Movement at 50

The Millennial’s today who are still in college, the so-called Social Justice Warriors who want to establish their form of political correctness on the entire country who believe that minority Americans, are entitled to never having to hear anything that offends them, could learn so much from the Baby Boomers of the 1960s. The Hippies, who weren’t fighting for collectivism and censorship, political correctness, but instead were fighting for individual freedom and Freedom of Speech. The right for Free Americans to express exactly how they feel about issues. On and off campus.

The Hippies, the long beards of the 1960s, the Baby Boomers, were fighting against the right-wing establishment who believe America was still in the 1950s. When individualism and individuality, were still not common and if anything looked down upon. Where people were told how to think, instead of taught how to learn and then base their own views on what they just learned. Where individual freedom and free speech were only tolerated if people were doing, saying and believing what the establishment approved of.

Again, free speech is exactly that. Take it for what its worth, because it by itself is not designed to make you feel good or bad, but to express how someone feels and when done right inform people as well. ‘This is where you’re doing well and this is where you need improvement. This is what you should do less of if not stop all together. This is what you should be doing more of.’ And these are just some examples of what free speech is. Which is something the long beards of today, the Millennial’s who are in college simply don’t understand and approve of.

It means that you have the constitutional right to express how you feel about someone, or some group, or something, but that person next to you and everyone else not only have the constitutional right to not only tell you what they think about what you have to say, but express their own views on the same subject, or any other subject that they want to talk about. And you have the same constitutional right to express how you feel about what they have to say about whatever they’re talking about as well.

Just because America has a history of racial and ethnic discrimination, which is the worst part of our national history, doesn’t protect ethnic, racial and religious minorities from having to hear anything critical about themselves or their group in the future. Especially when the criticism is accurate. There’s nothing bigoted about the truth and even when someone delivers half-truths about people perhaps to make partisan points and even racial or ethnic points to make a group seem worst than they actually are, you can always present the rest of the story and point out whatever hypocrisy the commentator is making.

There’s nothing bigoted about saying that women and gays are treated like second-class citizens and slaves, or risk death if they try to convert from Islam in the Arab and broader Muslim World, since those things are actually true. Just like gays and women are treated like second-class citizens in the Bible Belt in America. Free speech, is free and facts don’t lie and when someone is actually offended by the truth, then they have a real problem with dealing with reality. And have real self-improvement issues to deal with beyond whatever negative facts that have already come out about them. But that is no reason from censoring the truth and free speech. Especially in a liberal democracy like America.

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Hippies
Source: This piece was originally posted at The New Democrat Plus

This era the 1960s especially the late 60s is an example of why I wish I was 20-25 years older than I am today. Instead of being born in mid 1970s, I wish I was born in the early 50s or mid-50s. Now of course that would mean I’m either pushing 60, or in my early to mid 60s today, so that would be the drawback. But instead of hearing about the latest celebrity and why they are in jail today, or who they are sleeping with. Or the latest computer or smart phone and what was the coolest commercial Super Bowl, with very little if any mention about who actually won the game, I would be hearing about real true crime stories and people who were at least a certain extent victims of their generation, who were lost and fell to a madman.

The 1960s was an incredibly fascinating for both good and bad. And you could say Charles Manson and his group ended the peace and love anti-establishment decade. But the fact is the 1960s was one of the most divisive and violent decades America has ever experienced before Charlie Manson ever came on the scene. What Manson and his group, his crime family did was to escalate the violence of that decade and take their extreme anger out on completely innocent people. And why they do that? Because their victims were successful and wealthy, unlike the Manson Family. It was almost like a communist or socialist revolution taking out their anger against the rich establishment.

There were people who wanted peace and fought for peace and even died for peace. The great Dr. Martin L. King comes to mind damn fast and perhaps the ultimate tragedy of this decade as far as what happened to him, along with President John F. Kennedy. But the 1960s was not a peaceful decade. There was horrible violence from the early 1960s with a presidential assassination all the way through the decade. And The Manson Family didn’t even strike the biggest blows of the decade. In Los Angeles sure, as far as the amount of people who were killed. But keep in mind U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles in the late 60s, 1968. Not to take away from the Manson victims.

What the Manson Family represented was the anti-establishment movement and violence of the 1960s. And they took that to a horrible new evil level that perhaps hasn’t been unmatched by any other crime group in America, at least as far as the amount of people they killed in the amount of time that they killed. The Manson Family really were all about the 1960s and represented a lot of the good and bad. Mostly bad, but the 60s hippie movement, peace and love all of that didn’t die with the Manson Family. Because those things were always just dreams anyway.
Jack London: Charles Manson- The Man Who Killed The 60s Documentary

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Helter Skelter - Trailer

Source:Warner Brothers– Looks like part of the filming of the 1976 Helter Skelter movie.

Source:The Daily Press 

“Helter Skelter – Trailer”

From Warner Brothers

“The investigation and trial of the horrific Tate-LaBianca mass murders orchestrated by the psychotic pseudo-hippie cult leader, Charles Manson.”

Warner Brothers_ Helter Skelter 1976- Story of The Charles Manson Family (2)

Source:IMDB– “Helter Skelter: (TV Mini-Series 1976”

From IMDB

In 1976 there was a two-part TV mini-series I believe on CBS about the Manson Crime Family from the late 1960s and even after their leader Charles Manson was arrested in late 1969 for his role in the Tate murders and other murders during the Manson Family murder spree from the summer of 1969, a summer Los Angeles will never forget.

The Manson Family was still in business so to speak in the early 1970s and even up to 1975 with Lynette Squeaky Frohm’s attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford.

And this mini-series was about the murders of the Manson Family in the Summer of 1969 and other business about the Manson Family. It was not a religious cult, there was some spirituality in it. But it was basically about a petty thief, pimp, career criminal who was never very good at staying out of prison. Who would get released from prison for the last time in the mid 1960s and work his way to the San Francisco area, pick up some girls in their late teens early 20s who ran away from home.

These were young adults late teens for the most part who seemed somewhat lost and build a family made up of high school and college dropouts. People that they believed were kissed off from society and Charlie Manson finally found a group of people who seemed like him, somewhat lost in the World. That didn’t seem to fit in with mainstream society and he founded his soldiers that would take out their anger against mainstream society.

Charlie Manson wasn’t intelligent in the sense that he was well-educated, he didn’t get through high school or make it to high school. He grew up in prison basically, in juvenile hall and probably didn’t spend much time in school there. He never knew his father and his mother was a prostitute who didn’t spend much time with her son and Charlie got moved around a lot as a kid. And probably didn’t feel very loved, as an FBI profiler once said about Manson on NBC Dateline: “Charlie Manson is an example of what happens when we don’t raise our kids well”.

Society in a sense has some blame here for creating Charlie Manson. Not to excuse Manson because he’s exactly where he belongs and will and should never leave prison. But society isn’t innocent here in the creation of Charlie Manson.

And what Manson had in his crime family were the people who would take out revenge for him against society: “If you were part of the establishment and successful in life, living in the Los Angeles area and they knew about you, you were a target of the Manson Family”. To paraphrase Vince Bugliosi who prosecuted the Manson Family. Charlie wasn’t stupid but he wasn’t educated either.

Charlie Manson had talent to play and write music, but also to read people and know how they work and how he could work them up to the point where he could make people kill for him, Charles Watson, Patricia Krenwenkell, Leslie Van Houten, Susan Atkins and others. And they found their targets in actress Sharon Tate, Karen Folger and others and killed them.

The Manson Family murders were some of the worst murders ever committed. Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein would’ve been proud of these murders.

The Manson victims literally being stabbed and hanged to death in their own homes and their blood being spread around their homes. The Manson Family literally left their mark and were begging for the death penalty with their murders. And we’re given the death penalty before the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty in I believe 1973. The only reason why these serial murderers are alive today. Their lives being spared something they didn’t do for their victims and they are the poster children for why we need to raise our kids well.

And the Manson Crime Family had to be stopped for them to pay their debt to society. But to put them out of business so they couldn’t strike again.

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Bob Parker_ CBS News- 1968_ A Year That Changed America

Source:Bob Parker– from CBS News’s 1978 documentary about the year 1968.

Source:The Daily Press

“1968 A Year that Changed America with Harry Reasoner. A look back on the year 1968, produced by CBS News in 1978.”

From Bob Parker

“Time Magazine January 11 1988 1968 The Year That Shaped a Generation ”

1968

Source:Amazon– TIME Magazine’s cover about the year 1968.

From Amazon

I think one thing that separates America and makes us stronger than anyone else is that we can go through a year like 1968 and get through it and survive it and still remain one country. Unlike other countries that tend to go through such division between the people and their government and overall establishment of the country in one year and you see them come apart. With the government falling and perhaps even leading to some type of civil war. Egypt comes to mind pretty fast and what is going on in Syria and Venezuela right now are other good examples.

Having said all of that, it’s hard to find anything good about 1968 other than maybe the music and the fact that we started to get along better as far as race relations. Where racism and other types of bigotry started to really go out of style. And bigots were left to hide their bigotry or pay serious prices for it. But other than that 1968 was one big disaster after another. A year full of violence with murders and assassinations, the President of the United States deciding not to even bother running for reelection because there were so many people who literally hated him in both parties.

And that is just about the domestic scene in America, but then you go to the Vietnam War itself with Americans finally figuring out that we are not just losing the war, but it is probably lost. And we started seeing all of those dead American soldiers coming home from it.

I guess one good thing about 1968 is that Americans finally woke up and figured out that their government not only doesn’t always tell the truth, but they even lie to their people. The Johnson Administration saying that they were making progress in Vietnam when they knew the opposite was true and that Communist Vietnam was getting stronger.

1968 represents the 1960s as well as it could possibly be. A year of revolution, protest, violence, people coming together from multiple races to be part of the same movement. Where millions of Americans became free to be themselves and no long feel like they had to live a certain way of life in order to fit in or even be good people.

1968 was a shakeup of the entire United States and perhaps was something that the country needed. Even with all the violence and the lost of lives in that decade so Americans would know about the problems in the country, but also what could be done about them. And what also makes us great as a country which is our freedom and diversity.

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